


Passing Strangers

by Sholio



Category: Banshee (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Developing Friendships, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-08
Updated: 2018-11-08
Packaged: 2019-08-20 14:18:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16557350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Set post-season-four. Now that the crisis is over, Kurt and Carrie no longer have to pretend not to know each other. But old habits die hard, and it's not easy to move from teaming up against a common enemy, to finding out if a friendship can take hold in the light of day.





	Passing Strangers

The last and only time Kurt had been to Carrie Hopewell's house, it was when her place had been shot up by Proctor's thugs. It looked a lot better now, but he figured six months would do that. Nobody wanted to live in a house with broken-out windows and a door sawed halfway off its hinges by automatic weapons fire, especially in a Pennsylvania winter.

Still, he thought as he climbed the steps to her front porch that the place looked _good._ It didn't just have new windows, but sharp-looking new siding with nice trim, and there was a Christmas wreath hanging on the door.

It still felt twenty different kinds of wrong to be here, at her front door, in broad daylight -- wearing his uniform and driving a very conspicuous Sheriff's Department cruiser, no less. For months, their mutual safety had relied on making sure that no one had any reason to think the former mayor's ex-wife/widow and one particular deputy knew each other beyond a vague, nodding acquaintance. Paranoia became a habit, over time -- a habit he knew very well. Even with all of it months behind them now, he couldn't shake a small voice inside him screaming, _You shouldn't be here! It's not safe! For you or for her!_

He stood in front of her door for awhile, as the cold bit through his uniform and his gloved hand curled around the package pressed to his chest. His other hand, in a loose fist, hovered above the wreath but refused to descend. He ought to just go get back in his car. Go home to Maggie. Maybe Mrs. Hopewell wasn't home (but the warm light shining through the curtains into the blue winter dusk gave the lie to that). Maybe she wouldn't want to see him, a reminder of everything that had happened last summer (and that was far more likely; it wasn't like very many people wanted to see him, if it came down to that).

Although ... that was less true than it used to be.

Still, he was halfway to turning around and going back down to his cruiser when the door opened and Carrie Hopewell stood framed in a block of light. 

"You're going to freeze," she said briskly. "Come on in."

There wasn't much you could do when a woman who used to beat up drug dealers and rapists for fun stood looking at you like that. He stamped the snow off his boots and stepped meekly into her front hallway. The house smelled like spices and baking, which made him realize he hadn't even known that Mrs. Hopewell cooked. 

It was a little bit crazy, if he thought about it. They'd waged a one-man/one-woman war against Proctor for months, and yet, they didn't actually know each other at all. She'd never been to his house; he'd never been inside hers. He hadn't expected it to look this nice inside, with paint so fresh that the baseboards and window frames were still taped off, and a poinsettia plant on a pretty little table inside the door.

"So you knew I was out there?" he asked.

"I saw you on the security cameras." She turned to go back into the kitchen just visible down the hall. Over her shoulder she said, "Come on in. There are cookies fresh out of the oven. They're gingerbread."

That made him smile a little. "Thank you, Mrs. Hopewell."

Her answering smile was bright and quick, making her look nothing at all like she used to. He had rarely seen her smile when they used to meet in parking lots, outside the courthouse, in his cruiser parked down dead-end roads. "I don't suppose I can convince you to call me Carrie," she said.

"It might be hard for me," he admitted honestly.

She laughed softly and held out a plate. He took a cookie without taking his gloves off. They were thin wool ones, the fingerless kind; they didn't cover up the tattoos entirely, not the finger ones, but they made it ... better. A little.

"So are you going to tell me what that is?" she asked, nodding to the package tucked against his chest.

He lowered the cookie quickly without biting into it. "Uh, yeah. This." He hesitated and then thrust the package in her direction without looking at it, or at her. _She'll hate it. She'll think it's weird that I'm doing this. It probably IS weird that I'm doing this._ "It's for your son. Max."

"Oh," she said, and he glanced up quickly in time to see a strange, soft expression come over her face as she took it. He dropped his eyes again.

"I was just thinking, you know. You've got a kid. I've ... got a kid." Those words did something strange and wonderful to his chest, as they always did. He still couldn't quite wrap his head around it, that he _had_ this -- a home, a family, people who loved him, that he got to go home to every night.

"And you got Max a Christmas present." She sounded like she couldn't quite believe it.

"I didn't know what he'd like. I just looked around in the toy aisle and found something I thought I would have liked when I was a kid." It would have helped if he'd even been able to remember how old Carrie's son was. Older than Hank, younger than her oldest child, who was college-aged, and that was all he knew. "It's a toy glider set," he added, just in case she thought it was something strange or ... twisted. Not that he thought Carrie Hopewell thought things like that about him, but you never knew, and he'd learned to assume nothing when it came to the things that people thought about him. It was better to get it all out into the open and explain, rather than letting suspicions grow and twist in the dark. "You put it together yourself, and it flies. I thought ... it would be something that would be fun to play with out here, with all that open space you've got ..."

"Deputy Bunker," she said softly, and then before he knew what was happening, her arms were around him, wiry and strong, hugging him hard.

He didn't know how to deal with people hugging him, although he was getting a little better at it. The only people who ever hugged him were Maggie and Hank, and that was two more people than he'd been hugged by in twenty-some-odd years prior to meeting them. _Hands, right,_ he thought, and hesitantly brought up his arms around her and touched his hands (one still clutching a warm gingerbread cookie) to her back. 

It occurred to him, as she kept hugging him, that maybe Carrie Hopewell didn't have very many people to hug her, either. Maybe she didn't have much more experience with it than he did.

"Mrs. Hopewell?" he said into her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said quickly, and pulled back and let go, to his mingled regret and relief. She brushed at the corner of her eye. "That's nice of you. It's really nice. Thank you. I'll just go put it under the tree, all right? And you go ahead and eat that cookie, I need a taste test."

"Okay," he said, and took a bite. It was good. She really was a good cook. (But Maggie was still the best cook he knew. And Maggie liked cooking _for him,_ which he still couldn't get over.)

He wasn't sure if she wanted him to follow her into the living room, so he stayed in the kitchen and had somewhat guiltily helped himself to two more cookies by the time she came back. It'd been a busy day at the station, and he hadn't had a chance to grab lunch. "They're good," he told her.

"Glad to hear it. Since it looks like I made enough for an army." She looked around the kitchen ruefully at the cookies cooling on every surface. "I don't even know what I'm going to do with all of these. Would you like to take some home with you?"

"Yes, please, if you don't mind. That'd be nice."

"Believe me, you'd be helping me out." She began pulling plastic containers out from under the counter. "Actually ... could you help me pack up some more of these? I can take them to the neighbors too. Here, fill this up."

It was companionable, packing cookies in her kitchen, side by side. Quiet, out here in the country. No sounds at all.

"Where's Max?" Kurt asked as he passed her another filled container and she added it to the stack.

"Over at a friend's house for the evening. And Deva is flying in tomorrow for the winter break. A full semester at college already, can you believe it?" She shook her head, and then asked, "Did you go to college, Deputy?"

"No. I was doing something else with my life then."

"... right." She was quiet for a moment, not looking at him, and he floundered around uselessly trying to find a new conversational topic until she went on, "Me too. Different stuff, I mean. But in its way, maybe not so different after all." She glanced up at him. Her hair was escaping from its messy bun, falling down around her face. "Anyway, college wasn't my life plan, exactly. So it's an alien world to me, this world she's in. She sends me emails about her classes and pictures of her friends, and it's almost like something on TV, it's so different from anything I've ever known. Does that sound weird?"

He wanted to smile a little, almost, thinking about the way that conversations in the Cadi used to stall out whenever his co-workers started talking about their families and their childhoods and turned to him for his input. It was less like that these days -- because they were used to him by now, and anyway, he did have a few things to talk about now, stories to tell about Maggie and Hank. 

"It doesn't sound weird to me," he said quietly.

"No. I guess it wouldn't." She snapped a lid onto the largest of the plastic containers and pressed it into his hands. "There you go. Take that one. And maybe another to take in to work with you tomorrow. Or ... no, two of them." Before he could protest, the containers were stacked in his hands.

"Thank you," he said. He almost tacked on a "Mrs. Hopewell" by habit, tried to wrap his mind around the idea of changing it to "Carrie," and ended up with "... ma'am."

She smiled, once again making him think of how little he'd seen her do that during those months when they conducted their clandestine meetings and their secret war, and how different it made her look. The deep sadness she'd been carrying was still there, but it wasn't so close to the surface anymore.

"You and Maggie should come over, one of these days," she said suddenly. "You two, and ... what's her son's name?"

"Hank."

"Maggie and Hank, yes. You're all welcome to have dinner here, sometime soon. Gordon and I used to entertain, but since I moved to the farmhouse, I haven't had anyone over ... ever," she added, in a way that was wistful and a little bit sad. "And with Deva back in town, we'll have a houseful. It would be fun to cook for someone other than me and Max for a change."

The idea of eating in someone else's house, sitting at someone else's table, making small talk with people he didn't know well, flooded him with dismay. And yet ...

Maybe it would be a good idea. Maggie might like to go out. Everyone at that table would know about him; it was just Mrs. Hopewell and her kids, after all. It might even be fun.

"I can ask Maggie," he said, and lying only a little, "I'd like that. Thank you."

"Do you want to stay for a drink?" she asked, making him notice the open bottle of wine by the sink, the glass half-full with lipstick smudges on the rim, as darkness gathered outside the window behind it.

"Thank you, ma'am, but I can't. I need to get home."

"Yes," she said quietly, "of course. But you'll ask Maggie about dinner?"

"I will."

"And you still have my number."

"I do. And ..." He hesitated, feeling around the edges of this new thing -- this thing that was socializing with people outside of work, having people in his life who smiled when they saw him rather than looking first at his tattoos and then away. Having friends. "I could take a rain check on that drink, maybe?"

Her smile was bright and warm, chasing away the chill of the dark.

**Author's Note:**

> You know, I think the hardest thing about writing this fic was always making sure that the narration always referred to her as Mrs. Hopewell or her full name (never Carrie), because Kurt is so polite and formal. I started out calling her Carrie in narration and "Mrs. Hopewell" in dialogue, but it just didn't look right.


End file.
